Kim VanBelois

Bespoke Consultancy and Networking in Environmental, Cultural and Social Education Kim Van Belois is the founder and Director of Fresh Beleaf Integrity CIC. As a Canadian female immigrant to the UK, Kim knows lived experience. After completing her BA in International Business Management in the USA, she pursued a career in the development of national educational services and has taught for over 20 years. Not only a qualified teacher, she is an entrepreneur, a women's and youth mental health counsellor and a proud grandmother of three. After her completion of studies at Oxford University and a long period of recovery she was inspired to give back to those who had helped her the most. Fresh Beleaf Integrity CIC is a visionary type of social enterprise working at the intersection of international development, national business and local people. Using the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a spring board, we rely on our expertise in education and networking to apply innovative creativity; maximizing improvements in social and environmental well-being. We provide services to governments, companies, charities and community members engaged in activities around the local spaces that mean the most to you. That is how we turn global goals into local actions. We work with your community to understand your needs, identify barriers and support you to achieve your innovative ideas to create a better environment, provide employment, enhance learning and skills whilst having fun. We help local entrepreneurs diversify their audiences and offer them support in navigating through support services that can make their businesses or projects become a reality. We provide a wide range of services including educating children and adults about the importance of connecting and preserving nature, providing alternative pathways and support for young adults as well as creating spaces for those recovering from poor mental health. We also engage with long term sustainability projects and contracts led by our partner facilitators. One of the key aims of our organisation is to explore how settings could better use their planning or resources in order to enhance experiences and learning, as well as continuing to reduce the amount of environmental impacts required to do so. We focus on cultural capital as an essential knowledge that children, youth and vulnerable adults need to prepare them for their future success. It is about giving people the best possible support to achieve their goals. We hope to support schools, clubs and other social or cultural groups to participate in programs that will enable better school performance, increase confidence and resilience, promote healthy habits, discover different social settings or cultures, access higher education and be successful in pursuit of work or career. We want to help people gain the skills and qualifications they are passionate about and to put those back into the communities they live in. We want to ensure a sustainable future for Oldham and be a leading example for the world. We want to use our passion for creativity, our knowledge of environmentalism and merge that with opportunity so that everyone wins! Check out some of our work on www.freshbeleaf.org